gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Infamous last words

On Monday, Canada's first TV weatherman died at age 91. Percy Saltzman was the very first person to appear on CBC-TV when it signed on in 1952. He pretty much invented the industry: the first road and forest fire reports, the first use of radar and satellite, and the first signature bit - a flip of the chalk at the end of his reports.

When news of his death broke, I posted his obit on the CBC Archives site, and wrote a short piece for Inside the CBC, which I'll be assisting with this week.

Then, a comment on that piece absolutely blew my mind: Percy Saltzman had a blog!

Actually, he had a rather decent website, percysaltzman.com.

But the blog is a real eye-opener. Here's an old guy - a nonagenerian, to be precise - who started a blog in May 2006. Of interest, his first entry was about the death of another famous Canadian, John Kenneth Galbraith.

But it's his last blog entry that has me reeling. On Dec. 6, 2006, he posted his final piece, entitled Nudies and Me. Here's how it begins.

All my long life I have doted on the female form divine. It’s a sort of madness, an all-consuming passion, persisting now into my tenth decade.

I welcome the frenzy. It maketh the juices to flow, the mouth to salivate, the throat to tickle and tighten, the eyes to glitter and bulge, the crotch also, the pulse to race, the heart to drum like an all-steel band.

Racy stuff! And it gets racer, with a discussion of catching his parents "in flagrante delicto making the beast with two backs", lonely adolescent moments when "hormonal surges drove me into an unremitting sexual frenzy, and with no natural female outlet handy, I took myself in hand", and deflowering his wife on his wedding night:

She was a virgin with as it happened a case-hardened maidenhead made of solid steel. There was no way I could penetrate despite urgent and repeated thrustings.

Avast! Too much! Where's WebSense when I need it?

That was posted Dec. 6th, and quite possibly the last thing he ever wrote. If you want to get creeped out even further, here's how his CBC.ca/Arts obit describes his demise:

About six weeks ago, the iconic TV pioneer suffered a seemingly minor injury and his health began deteriorating rapidly, his family said.

I almost expect that last post to trail off with, "and then… I… Arrghhhhhh……………………"

Sorry, that's a bit harsh. I have great respect for Saltzman and don't wish to speak ill of him. And I'm not, actually - his blog is extremely well-written, amusing and edgy. If anything, I think even more highly of this pioneer. To be that frank at age 91, to unabashedly post intimate information for the whole world (and even his great granddaughter) to one day read - that's ballsy. I can only hope to have as much vim at the end of my days.

But it also gets me thinking: what will my last blog post be?

Surely there are others, but Saltzman is the first blogger I've encountered to have passed away at the height of his blogging career. Nudies and Me will, presumably, stay online his last chapter. A strange legacy, but something tells me the man wouldn't object.

Should you treat each post as if it's your last? There's a daunting thought.

[Update to this story!]